{"id":448747,"date":"2026-03-26T11:36:51","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T10:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/03\/26\/la-corte-ue-conferma-il-congelamento-di-fondi-per-5-imprenditori-di-spicco-in-russia\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T12:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T11:05:12","slug":"eu-court-of-justice-confirms-freezing-of-funds-of-five-leading-businesspersons-operating-in-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/03\/26\/eu-court-of-justice-confirms-freezing-of-funds-of-five-leading-businesspersons-operating-in-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Court of Justice confirms freezing of funds of five leading businesspersons operating in Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – The Court of Justice<\/strong> of the European Union has confirmed the freezing of funds belonging to five prominent businesspersons operating in Russia<\/strong>. This development comes against the backdrop of Moscow\u2019s war of aggression against Ukraine, to which the EU Council has responded, since the start of the military invasion in February 2022, by adopting restrictive measures against companies and individuals close to the Kremlin. Among those affected by these sanctions, five<\/strong> \u2013 Dmitry Alexandrovich Pumpyanskiy, Tigran Khudaverdyan, Viktor Filippovich Rashnikov, Dmitry Arkadievich Mazepin, and German Khan – first lodged appeals before the General Court<\/strong> of the European Union and then<\/strong>, in 2023, when the General Court dismissed their appeals, lodged appeals before the Court<\/strong> of Justice. In the judgment<\/a> Today (26 March), the judges in Luxembourg dismissed all the appeals<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

The Court \u201cclarifies that it is the \u2018economic sectors\u2019, rather than the leading businesspersons involved in those sectors,
\nthat must provide a substantial source of revenue to the Russian Government,\u201d and that \u201cthe concept of the \u2018influence\u2019 of the businesspersons must be understood in the light of the economic
\ncontext in which they operate, irrespective of any link that they may have with the Russian Government.\u201d In the Court\u2019s view, \u201cbecause they are of significant importance for the Russian economy that those persons are likely to further, indirectly, the
\nfinancing of destabilising actions against Ukraine<\/strong>, by contributing to maintaining the profitability, or the prosperity, of the
\neconomic sectors in which they are involved.\u201d Furthermore, the judges note that \u201cthe legality of a criterion serving as the basis for the imposition of restrictive measures can be
\naffected only if that criterion is manifestly inappropriate.\u201d However, this criterion \u201ccannot be regarded as unlawful provided that it
\ntargets categories of persons that have, albeit indirectly and albeit independently of any personal conduct, an objective
\nlink with the third country against which the European Union is seeking to impose sanctions.”<\/p>\n

Finally, in this specific case, “the
\nCourt finds that there is an objective link between, <\/strong>on the one hand, important businesspersons involved in sectors that
\nare lucrative for Russia and,<\/strong> on the other, the objective consisting in increasing the pressure exerted on that country <\/strong>and
\nthe costs of its actions to destabilise Ukraine.” It therefore confirms that to determine whether the restrictive measures are proportionate, it is sufficient to verify whether they are not manifestly inappropriate for achieving the legitimate objective pursued and whether they do not manifestly exceed what is necessary to achieve that objective. As in the case of the five Russian businesspersons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The judges in Luxembourg dismissed the appeals lodged by the parties concerned, explaining that, given their “significant importance to the economy” of the country, they “may indirectly facilitate the financing of Moscow’s actions” against Ukraine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7874,"featured_media":245510,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25712],"tags":[28917,25804,25803,33394,30781],"class_list":["post-448747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","tag-court-justice-eu-en","tag-sanctionsin","tag-russia-in-2","tag-ue","tag-ukraine-in-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7874"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448748,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448747\/revisions\/448748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}